The NPD Group's sales figures for the month of June are in and they are not pretty. On the hardware side, sales dropped a painful 38% year-over-year, with nearly every console seeing a drop in sales from June of 2008.
Month-to-month, things improved over May's sales. But seeing big declines from the previous June were the Wii, PlayStation 3 and PSP, with only the Xbox 360 improving upon its performance from June of last year. The hardware contest finished as it has for the majority of 2009, with the Wii and Nintendo DS/DSi topping sales charts, the Xbox 360 taking third place, and a trio of PlayStation consoles occupying the bottom half of the list.
Thanks to the combined Nintendo DS Lite and DSi sales, Nintendo's portable platforms topped the chart with 766,500 units sold, a less frightening drop from the 783,000 sold in June 2008. On the other end of the scale, without the help of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Theft Auto IV, PS3 sales dipped from 405,500 last June, to 164,700 this June.
Here are the NPD Group's video game hardware sales figures for the month of June, a 35 day reporting period.
- Nintendo DS - 766,500
- Wii - 361,700
- Xbox 360 - 240,600
- PlayStation 3 - 164,700
- PSP - 163,500
- PlayStation 2 - 152,700
U.S. consumers bought $382.62 million worth of consoles last month, compared to $617.25 million a year ago.
NPD analyst Anita Frazier weighs in...
"The Xbox 360 is the only platform to have realized a unit sales increase over last June. YTD, both the 360 and NDS have generated an increase in unit sales. Although many track month-to-month sales changes, comparisons to May must take into account that June is a five-week reporting month while May spanned four weeks."
"While Wii sales are down from last year, the platform is still realizing very strong sales month after month. Compared against historical performance of other systems this far into the console lifecycle, the unit sales performance is still strong."